Resurrection
by LizBee
Summary: Delenn is 140 years old, and ready to go to the sea. The universe has other plans.
1. Chapter 1

**Resurrection**

by LizBee

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**Notes:** This is a WiP. Yes, that's a terrible cliche, and as I am a slow writer, subject to whims and blocks and real life, there is no guarantee that there will be updates. You pays your money and you takes your chances. On the other hand, I am terribly obsessed with this idea, and I don't imagine the plot will take more than 10 chapters of about 1500-2000 words each. And I promise never to threaten to withhold chapters if I don't get enough feedback. The truth is, I want to write this fic, but I just had to share it with _someone_ at the same time. My usual best friend/beta doesn't know B5, so I'm just throwing it out there for the world.

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**Prologue**

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_I am going to the sea_.

In the silence of space, Delenn smiled. For too long, she had ignored the call, lingering as she put her affairs in order, delaying the inevitable. Saying goodbye.

Her youngest great-grandson's tears still seemed to linger on her cheek, but she could no longer imagine returning.

_I am going to the sea._

Valen had left no body behind when he died; nor had John. She required no mystical vanishment for herself, no First Ones to take her away. Only a natural end, and freedom at last from age and pain and grief and life.

She had lived too long. There were days when her childhood memories seemed more vivid than the recent past, and moments when to look in a mirror was to see the face of an alien stranger.

Oh yes, she was ready to go.

As if in response to her thoughts, her little ship gave a shudder. Alarms chimed, but Delenn silenced them. She looked out at the stars, and waited for the end to come.

The stars flickered.

For a moment, all of reality seemed to invert itself around her. The alarms activated again, more urgent than before, and the ship threatened to tear itself apart. Not at all the peaceful death she had envisioned for herself.

Another alarm was blaring, a proximity detector this time. Something had struck Delenn in the head – or had she been thrown about in the turbulence? She could barely see, but there was a ship, a vast cruiser drawing her little vessel in.

"No," she moaned.

Damn them all. She was ready – why couldn't they let her go? She was so old – so weary – would she spend more years defending her past to increasingly indifferent or hostile strangers?

The world was going grey.

Perhaps she would yet escape.

Time seemed to stretch around her. At one point, although she could not quite recall it, she lost her balance, and the floor rose up to meet her. Her ship stopped moving. There were people around her, barking orders at each other, taking the hands she could no longer feel. Telling her to hold on just a few minutes more.

_You're too late_, Delenn tried to tell them. _Thank Valen, you're too late._

She closed her eyes, and death came with the roar of an ocean.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter One**

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No shadows fell here. No light, either, just a hazy glow occasionally penetrated by voices.

She tried to call for John, but her mouth was gagged, her hands were bound. She was a prisoner here in the twilight.

Was this, she wondered, how Anna Sheridan had spent her final moments of consciousness, before the Shadows had consumed her utterly? Was she, too, to serve within the heart of a Shadow vessel?

No, no. No Shadows fell here.

"You know," said a distant voice, "I think this one might be viable."

"Brain activity's too erratic."

"Want to make a bet?"

Something touched her neck, and coldness flooded her veins, drawing her down towards unconsciousness.

As the darkness claimed her, she could not even scream.

She was underwater, floating in the silence. Strong hands gripped hers, pulling her further down. The water was warm, and even the increasing darkness seemed reassuring. The further she sank, the safer she felt. A few shafts of sunlight pierced the surface, reflecting off her companion's faded blond hair.

"John," she called, and her voice echoed through the water, and his hands tightened as he pulled her deeper.

Then the currents changed, and something pulled her back, an inexorable force drawing her up towards the surface. Delenn struggled, forcing herself deeper, and John tried to draw her back down, but she was rising faster with every second. The light was growing brighter. John vanished between one blink and the next, and she was alone, but for the creature pulling her back to life.

She cried out as she broke the surface, and opened her eyes.

For a few seconds, she was completely blind, but as her eyes adjusted, she realised there was only one source of light in this room, and that was a small reading lamp. Even so, it was too bright for her weakened eyes, and she blinked away tears.

Her hands, when she tried to raise them, were dotted with medical sensors. She stared at them, puzzled, trying to make sense of the smooth, young flesh. Her whole body was covered in tiny sensors, she realised. The knowledge made her absurdly itchy, but she lacked the strength for further movement.

There was a sound, over in the corner with the light. A book snapped shut. A person stood up. Footsteps.

The person was a woman, a Human. Young, as everyone seemed young these days. She was staring down at Delenn, her dispassionate gaze giving little away. Eventually she sighed, as if taking a step she knew she'd regret, and said, "Can you speak?"

Delenn's voice was cracked, her mouth and lips dry. On her first attempt, she could make no sound at all.

"Yes," she managed. "Water?"

The woman vanished for a moment, then reappeared, a cup in her hand. She put it against Delenn's lips.

The water was the same temperature as the air, and slightly stale. Delenn swallowed, and closed her eyes in pleasure.

When she opened them again, the woman's guarded expression returned.

"Have I been ill?" Delenn asked.

"In a manner of speaking."

"I don't believe I know you."

"I'm Dr Xiu Chen. I was the chief physical to the president of the Interstellar Alliance until three months ago."

"What happened?"

"We had an ethical disagreement, you see."

Delenn didn't; she was growing tired again, and Dr Chen seemed oddly hostile.

"My family," she said vaguely, "will you tell them I'm recovering?"

"They'll be told."

There was movement outside. The doors flew open, flooding the room with light. Delenn closed her eyes and turned away.

"You're not supposed to be here, Xiu," a man was saying. "They'll delete your clearance, now. Send you to the outer worlds."

"I'm coming, G'Ren." Chen sounded weary. "I just had to see."

"And?"

But she had left the room, too far away for Delenn to hear the answer. People were bustling around her bed, talking over her. As if being old and ill made her inanimate. Someone caught her eye and swore. Something was injected into her arm, and Delenn began to lose consciousness again.

The last thing she heard was a man's voice, saying, "Call me crazy, but this one almost seems sentient."

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After that, she drifted for a long time. Doctors and nurses talked over her, and she was visited by a man with a warm, gravelly voice who sat beside her bed and read aloud from the Meditations of Valen.

Of David and her family, there was no sign.

One day, she opened her eyes and found it was Dr Chen by her bed.

"I thought they took you away," she murmured.

"That was my sister. I'm Jing Chen."

"You look very much alike."

"Yes," said Chen, "but you're the one we should be talking about."

She administered a series of cognitive tests, childish at first, then increasingly complex. Chen said little, but she smiled as she recorded the results.

"We might be able to discharge you soon," she said.

"My family," said Delenn. "Have they--"

"I think that's enough for today," said Chen, standing up. "You've exceeded expectations. They'll be very happy."

She walked away before Delenn could repeat her question, and the nurse who brought her a meal of clear broth and tea was a stranger.

Nevertheless, when she had eaten all she could manage and he had returned to take the tray, she asked him, "Has my family visited?"

"Ma'am?"

"My son, my grandchildren."

"No, ma'am."

Avoiding her gaze, he took her tray and walked out, leaving Delenn alone with her confusion.

Eventually, she fell into an unwilling sleep.

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She woke to the scrap of a chair on the floor. Dr Chen – the first sister, the serious one – was sitting beside her bed.

"I hear you're asking questions," she said.

"I thought they took you away," Delenn said.

"I have friends." Chen shrugged. With a wave of her fingers, she pulled up a transparent screen and scrolled through the display.

"Don't drink the tea," she said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Your tea is being laced with a mild sedative. Keeps you sleepy and docile. Easy to deal with."

Delenn thought about the sluggishness that had marked recent weeks, her inability to keep awake for more than a couple of hours.

"You'll be starting physiotherapy in a few days. Wilson will push you. Let him." Chen scrolled on. "I see you've become part of my sister's research. I suppose there are worse fates." She dismissed the screen and turned her full attention to Delenn.

"I wasn't part of the decision to keep the facts from you," she said, "but I imagine the people concerned thought they were doing it for your own good. The truth might have inconvenient consequences, you see."

"It often does," said Delenn. "You don't share this opinion?"

"They're afraid of what you might do if you know. I'm curious to see. And, of course, I have nothing to lose."

"Then," said Delenn, "tell me the truth."

Chen's gaze was distant.

"We found your ship six months ago, drifting in a temporal distortion field. You were dying."

A memory awoke, in Delenn, as distant as a long-ago dream.

"You saved me?"

"No."

Delenn said nothing.

"Your neural pathways were mapped. Memories recorded. Where the data was degraded, they matched it against the records in the Neural Archives on Sirius IX. A series of clones were started. Force-grown. The most likely ones had the neural maps implanted. You're the only one that survived and woke up. Congratulations." Chen's lips twisted in something that, in another person, might have been a smile. "It's 2611. Everyone you ever knew or loved is dead, and no one had the guts to tell you. Universe is a bitch, right?"

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_to be continued_


End file.
